In recent years, climate change concerns, reduction in costs, governmental initiatives, and other factors have driven a rapid rise in the adoption of renewable energy generation systems (i.e., systems that generate energy using renewable resources such as solar, wind, fuel cells, geothermal etc.) at residential and non-residential sites. Solar energy generation systems, in particular, have been very popular energy generation systems due to numerous advantages over other renewable sources.
Solar energy generation systems include photovoltaic (PV) modules that can generate power from the sun, and can provide the generated power to a utility grid or one or more loads. Some solar energy generation systems can store energy from the PV and/or utility grid in a battery for future use, and can receive power from the utility grid and re-route power to the one or more loads without having to use power generated from the sun or from energy stored in the battery.
Inverters in conventional solar energy generation systems typically operate at/produce power levels that are not high enough to power the entire set of loads in the main panel at a customer site. Accordingly, these inverters limit the amount of power provided by the AC grid to the set of loads during grid-tied (on-grid) mode. Additionally, in reduced power circumstances (e.g., when a black-out event occurs or when a relatively low power-rated inverter cannot output enough power to support the entire set of loads at a customer site) the PV system may only provide power to a subset of the entire set of loads (e.g., the loads designated as back-up loads). Accordingly, loads that are not back-up loads will not be able to receive power from the PV system and thus cannot be used.